Digital Blog Post #K – Chapter 6

Chapter 6 in the text book was all about online learning and using educational websites and apps to help teachers use technology in an educational way. The first concept that interested me is social bookmarking.  Bookmarking is probably something everyone does when they are on the internet. You find a website you find interesting and you bookmark it so you can later go into your bookmarks and find it easily. Social bookmarking expands that concept by allowing someone to take their bookmarks and share them with other users. These bookmarks are public and be added onto by other users. If there is a bookmark you don’t want everyone to see you can also keep it private. I think that this is a great resource for teachers. It allows you to easily go back to websites that you have found useful in the past, plus it allows you to share your information with everyone else. Looking at other teacher’s social bookmarks could also give you great ideas for new lessons.

Poster Created on Canva By Chasity Kahl

Another great concept from chapter 6 is information alert. Information alert is “an electronic notice that new information about a topic has just become available in some electronic publication format.” (Maloy, et al, 2013, p.135) These alerts allow teachers to constantly be updated on topics that are useful to them. I think this is a great time saving tool that as a future teacher I would defiantly use. Not only is it time saving but it would also keep me updated on the latest information and that would also insure that my lessons would be up to date. I think it is important to give student lessons that are as updated as possible.

The third concept that I wanted to learn more about is visual field trips. Visual field trips are a way for student to take a field trip without even leaving the classroom. The field trip in its entirety is taken by going online and viewing it on a computer. This can be done by one student viewing it on the computer or by projecting it onto a screen for the entire class to view. I did a little research and found a great article Get Outta Class With Virtual Field Trips. This article includes a lot of like for virtual field trip links that will be useful to me as a future teacher. I think providing visual field trip will allow students to learn more about the world around them. It will also make the lessons fun and interactive.Below is an example of a virtual field trip that I found on YouTube.

 In conclusion, chapter 6 does a great job of explaining new ways for teachers to use technology to better their teaching abilities. Social bookmarking and information alerts will allow teachers to keep up to date with the information they need and it will also allow them to easily find and share that information. Visual field trips will also let teachers take their students on tours around the world without even leaving their classroom. All of these tools are only going to make learning and teaching better.

Resources:

Kahl, C. (2015, April 12). Explore - Poster by chasity.kahl6. Retrieved April 12, 2015, from https://www.canva.com/design/DABN_R6WyVo/JuNTwiCWQyLDvW84D4pWzw/view?&utm_content=DABN_R6WyVo&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton&cc_from_uid=UABN_VjhVUI

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

Steele-Carlin, S. (2014, October 29). Get Outta Class With Virtual Field Trips. Retrieved April 12, 2015, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech071.shtml

VirtualFieldTripsnet. (2014, November 1). Virtual Field Trip - Amazon Rainforest. Retrieved April 12, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEsV5rqbVNQ